


Signs

by PuddingTown



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Inspired by Music, M/M, Post-Canon, Reddie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 01:53:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17437649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuddingTown/pseuds/PuddingTown
Summary: I see signs now all the time / that you're not dead, you're sleeping / I believe in anything, that brings you back home to me.





	Signs

_I know he’s here._

“Mr. Tozier?”

_Give me a minute, I can find him, if you just give me one Goddamn minute._

“Mr. Tozier.”

_ONE minute, please, damn it!_

“Mr. Tozier, the flight’s landed, sir.”

Richie’s eyes shot open, his expression forcing the stewardess to step back. She could’ve sworn he was sleeping, but his face went from calm to stone in the blink of an eye. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t even blinked. The change, too swift to capture, was still registering in her mind - even as he grabbed his carry-on and exited the plane.

Tickets and money exchanged hands several times as Richie made his way from the airport, to a cab, to a hotel, and back again. Every chance he had to tear away from the golden state, he flew home. Not necessarily Derry, but a specific part of the rubble. Fifteen years came and went; movies were filmed, songs were recorded, celebrities overdosed or killed themselves, and here was L.A.’s beloved trashmouth, sifting through an abandoned town’s literal shit.

There was no other choice though.

It was either come back, cake his fingernails in muck... or forget.

He hadn’t heard from anyone else in a decade, although their names he could live with forgetting.

“Mr. Tozier?”

Richie ignored the call. Just a concierge.

“Mr. Tozier, you’re bleeding!”

He pushed open the door, walking out of the building. Some bright-eyed asshole made a cozy bed and breakfast right outside of Derry’s town limits. Richie might’ve kissed them. He became their best customer, although their business in selling a mysterious city death was profitable enough.

Marching along the road, he ignored the fog increasing. He ignored the stinging on his arm from where he cut an outline on the tattoo he’d gotten fifteen years ago. It was an impulse. A souvenir from Bangor which bizarrely needed touch ups too frequently to be considered a bad paint job. Everyone and everything wanted him to forget.

Therein lied the problem though. He _couldn’t_. Richie couldn’t walk down the damn street without seeing a twink fresh out of San Francisco, or turn on the radio without hearing Like a Virgin, or even smelling rubbing alcohol in his bathroom, and not think of _him_. Glancing down at his arm, he wondered if he should wrap up the wound, but he worried it would vanish underneath the bandages.

When he felt Eddie’s name slipping from his brain, he booked the first cab he could get to Bangor and etched it into his skin for safe keeping. Six months later, he noticed the tattoo was beginning to fade, and he couldn’t even remember why it mattered. It came to him in a dream. He slept through his alarm and the radio played a Queen song.

Someone had once gotten him stoned at a Van Halen album release party, and they told him, _“Think Trashmouth. You can’t change the volume of your thoughts, can you?”_ It left Richie bothered for months. He didn’t think of it until he heard a thought loud and clear, louder than he could ever actively make it again, in response to that damn Queen song: **_I BET EDDIE SPAGHETTI WOULD LOVE TO MEET FREDDIE._ **

That afternoon, he got a touch up on the tattoo. The artist suggested he get his money back for such a shitty first job. He was back again, six months later.

Sometimes he’d say Eddie’s name out loud just to say it.

He wrote it in journals. On scraps of newspaper. He pushed together the E-D-D-I-E in  his spaghetti-o’s when he’d forget to grocery shop.

At this point, Richie was positive Eddie would tell him to stop driving himself crazy. Except with more of a medical touch to his vocabulary.

When Richie reached the center of Derry, he dropped to his knees at the fault in the kissing bridge. One year, he’d finally carved his and Eddie’s initials. It felt right.

There’d been an earthquake at some point, tearing the bridge in half. When he was younger, he could jump the distance, but he couldn’t risk it at this age. Not his tired knees. Not his old bones. Running a hand through his hair, he considered trying, but he wanted to remember before he did anything reckless. Looking down at his arm again, he frowned. Eddie’s last name disappeared completely two weeks ago. He hadn’t even noticed it fade. One moment it was there, the next... gone.

Richie tried to remember why that stung, but he couldn’t place it. He figured it had to mean one thing, and one thing only: it was time to go home. He bypassed his childhood house. Hell, he even ignored the Barrens. Neither of those places he actually remembered. Not without help, and the help came in the form of notes he took here and there.

_Eddie and I once..._

_One time at the Barrens, Eddie..._

_Behind Stuttering Bill’s house..._

What he remembered on his own, now that he toured Derry’s remains, was seeing the light of day from under the city as it fell to shit. Bill and Beverly were the first out. Then Mike. Then Ben. Then... him.

Except he didn’t really leave the sewer.

Old arthritic hands weren’t going to hold him back. Moving broken pieces of concrete and mounds of dirt shot pangs of agony through his back, but he welcomed it. They distracted from the festering sting on his arm. It almost felt like the tattoo burned. Maybe that’s how it disappeared so quickly, like a laser removal.

He thought about everything and nothing as he dug. Quite clearly, he would get nowhere, digging like a dog. The sewers were impossible to navigate without Eddie. At least he could remember _Eddie_ had the sense of direction. Pausing, he stared up at the little sunlight that filtered through the clouds. Thinking about it now, he realized just how cruel that was. Eddie was their compass. They made it out, but they would never make it back in without him. Maybe it was meant to be that way.

Scowling, Richie kept digging. Cruel and fucking... Well, he didn’t have a another word. Just cruel. He remembered an afternoon from that summer where Eddie looked at him like women would look at him in the early 80s. They wanted to kiss him. Or, well, they wanted to do a lot more than kiss him, but Eddie was a sweet kid who didn’t even know he’d dig on gay sex. Richie smirked. He wanted to kiss him. Nothing happened though. Either Eddie was too scared or-

_Eddie, get in this house right now! You know your allergies are gonna act up!_

Richie froze, fear tightening his gut. He looked around to make sure he was alone, and his bowels loosened when he swore he caught a glimpse of the Paul Bunyan statue. After a moment, the cold sweat on his forehead chilled in a breeze, and he wiped it away before digging again. He swore he heard Eddie’s mom right behind him. She would’ve killed him had she known what her son wanted to do to him, and what he wanted to do back. No more sleepovers at Mrs.-

Once again he froze, his hands dropping to his sides.

“Kaspbrak,” he said. He held out his arm, looking at the dried blood. “Kaspbrak. Kaspbrak. Kaspbrak.” Rising to his feet, repeating the name, Richie climbed out of the ditch he was in, where the roads broke and the city met its’ death. Much like Pennywise. Much like Eddie. He wheezed and puffed as he climbed out, not stopping to take a breath, because he knew he’d forget. “Kaspbrak. Kaspbrak.” Sauntering up the road, he stopped at a payphone booth. Someone had smashed in one of the windows, and there was no phonebook, but there was a binder full of notebook paper.

Picking up one of the several pens scattered around it, Richie opened the binder, mildly surprised, yet not surprised at all to see a bulk of the pages were filled with his handwriting. He’d left this binder in 1993 when he finally wised up and made his fifteenth trip back, after remembering and forgetting what he came for, in one afternoon. There were no changes in what he wrote, but the paper aged for each year it’d been left in a foggy ghost town.

“Kaspbrak,” he mumbled as he scribbled it down, once to log, then again to keep for himself. He wrote it on a piece of paper he tore and pocketed, then again on his hand, then another time on his wrist, just in case. Derry’s disappearing ink liked to make a fool of him.

Rubbing his face, he set the pen down. He’d see it again in another seven or eight months. Maybe a year.


End file.
